Things I have never wanted to be

No offense to anyone I want to say that right! There are some jobs I have never been interested in doing: real estate agent, insurance agent, and certainly a nurse. As I said, I have no prejudice against the people who do these jobs, I have just never been interested in doing them myself. One of my dearest friends went to back to school to study nursing after having 3 children; my riding teacher gave that career upso she could study nursing. They are wonderful at their professions, I just do not get what made them want to do them. On that note I must say I have HUGE amounts of gratitude and awe for people who choose these professions.

I,as I said, never had any desire to do that job. Which is why I am bewildered to be
an untrained person doing this job. I now have to make decisions for my Mom that I feel totally unqualified to do, but I do them. This past week was really hard. My Mother ended up with an impacted bowel. I usually can handle
these situations on my own,(yes I have dis-impacted my Mother) but this was beyond my capability. The nurse and the nursing assistant had to work with suppository and enema and I got to hear the crying and screaming that accompanied that task. Of course, since neither one will move with us (even though I offered to cook whatever they wanted for meals), I was left to see what would happen in the afternoon.....would there be uncontrollable diarrhea, which can commonly follow an impaction? More of the impaction? Some trips to the bathroom that would ease the problem? I didn't know. If I gave her atavan, would that ease things or make it worse? How much to give her? Would she be willing to use oxygen since she was so exhausted?

One of the problems was that I not noticed how long it had been since she had moved her bowels. The reason I had not noticed was because my husband had gone to have his radiation markers placed on Monday. Since I had no caregiver that day, a kind friend took him. When he came home he was completely "zonked" as we used to say. I was caught up in caring for him. My mother too had not felt well on Monday.

Mom had back pain on Monday. I decided to give her atavan, not morphine since that is constipating. She had all ready had 1000 mg. of Tylenol and that had not worked.

These are the kinds of decisions, that I,who am not a nurse, make. What kind of pain meds. What do I do about constipation? If I use too much Miralax, then there is diarrhea, and if I give her too little there is impaction. In addition, when there is too much diarrhea, a bladder infection can occur. My Mom is completely asymptomatic and the only clue we have is increasing disorientation. However, I am seeing that anyway and I believe it may be her dementia increasing. If I give her the antibiotic(there is only one kind left that she is not allergic to) and if she doesn't have an infection, I may be increasing her resistance to this one antibiotic that she still take. Chronic diarrhea also increases soreness to the skin, so I have to watch out for bedsores, treating them with a paste that the Hospice people taught me to make out of 3 different balms. (They call it Pat's Paste, I call it Rena's Rump Rub) It is best to catch that red skin before a stage one and if not, at least take care of it before it gets to stage two. (can you believe I use these terms? Stage one and stage two??)

Wait a minute here? Does she need a little oxygen? I need to find that out. Is the filter clean and is there enough water in the canister before I start it up. By the way, I am quite good at cleaning wax out of a hearing aid.

For my last job....I never thought about being a beautician, but I just dried and styled Mom's hair, after her CNA washed it. Later, I will clip and file her nails.

I think what I am trying to say here is that I feel really inadequate in making the decisions I make on a daily basis. I really don't know what the right meds are and what the right time to give them is and what they will do or affect. I sometimes just wonder if I am slowly killing my Mom or really making her last days happy and comfortable.